


Everything That Matters Now

by t0talcha0s



Category: BioShock
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, good ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:56:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5377715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack had tried his best to turn his back on the events below the sea, and despite the memories haunting him the tides are changing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything That Matters Now

**Author's Note:**

> Why the hell would Ryan- someone who condemned religion- name his city with "no gods or kings only man" after a religious reference? (Like I bet ADAM and EVE being a religious reference pissed him off, but "Rapture" doesn't make sense.) He could have meant the elated sense but I doubt it.

They offered him everything, the city, the ADAM, and sometimes Jack wishes he'd taken it. It would make this world much easier, living alone beneath the waves, aging and crumbling alone in a city he was born, well, built to destroy. Jack thought he knew about what it was like to live topside, thought he had memories, a family, a farm, a life that was tossed aside in the blink of an eye by the man who called Jack "the closest thing I've ever had to a son." The truth was he was born, made, and meant to die in Rapture, he knows he was some accelerated growth experiment and conditioned to serve a purpose; and he's served that purpose, he doesn't know what he's supposed to do now. 

He remembers a last name, Wynand, but he wants to go by that lie like he wants to go by Ryan or Fontaine, which he supposes, in truth, are more valid a last name for him then Wynand ever was. 

He sighs, this upper world just isn't made for a genetically modified killing machine like him. New York just doesn't understand that Jack's skills are limited to shooting, killing, looting, following commands, exploring, surviving and feeling a lonesome trickle through his veins that begs for EVE to alight the unused plasmids that taint his body; none of which are employable skills. It doesn't help that he's completely unlisted in every country and, as governments see it, he doesn't exist. He's managed to get by using some old tricks, rummaging through trashcans, abandoned places, scrounging for upper-world money and other necessities. It's hard to remember to leave any weapons and most materials where they are, he knows his fists would be enough if anyone tried to fight him but ammo, empty shell casings, and rubber tubes have their allure, though there are no u-invents on the surface, not that he would even need one, he's done with the guerrilla warfare below the sea.

Sometimes he regrets it, ever going down there; next time he's faced with a strange lighthouse in the middle of the ocean he'll burn the place to hellfire and turn his back on it. He doesn't much like to think about it, but his memories of Rapture are the only memories he trusts to be truly real and his own. He remembers it all clearly, the killing, the bloated, rotting, deformed corpses of the dead splicers who's pockets he dug through, the feel of a heavy suit resting on his shoulders and the scent of big daddies around him, not to mention the scratched, harsh feeling of his freshly ripped apart, shredded vocal chord leaving him mute save for the pathetic moans of the lumbering creatures he had become one of, and he treasures the memory of the feeling of electricity at his fingertips, at the static through his veins which he could just point and let loose. Sometimes the itching inside his body for ADAM or EVE makes him feel like a filthy drug addict, he's seen his fair share of those up here in this city, but he remembers the splicers, these crack addicts could never compare. 

Splicers haunt his dreams, when he can even sleep that is. Their unrecognizable faces, no one would know them as who they were, how many of them had he killed? How many people had to watch their loved ones deteriorate until they became such creatures. How many splicers never got a proper burial, the proper recognition from those who knew them when they were human. They lost their identity in their splicing. Their words echo in his pounding eardrums even now, how they dared call _him_ monster, how he knows it's true and he was just a step behind facial tumors and picking up a spare animal mask. His veins still run with the same insanity that overcame those splicers. Jack can't help but wonder how he was able to not lose his mind, sometimes he thinks he has lost it. 

Jack often finds his mind, lost or otherwise, wandering to what had become of the little sisters he liberated and brought to the surface with him. He doesn't know many of their names, Mascha, Tenenbaum had told him of one of her girls, said she scrounged up what information she could about them but that's the only name she could find. He had given them to an orphanage, a true orphanage this time, because he sure as hell couldn't take care of them. He visits them when he's allowed, Mascha, now ten, recognizes the groans in the back of his throat and smiles. The women at the orphanage say the girls act strange sometimes, their gaze stays on scraped knees and bloody noses too long, they say it looks like roses. Mascha sings an odd tune to the younger girls to get them to sleep: "Mr. Bubbles, Mr. Bubbles Are you there? Are you there? Come and give me lollies, come and bring me toffees Teddy bears teddy bears." Jack's chest clenches each time she sings it, but the girls don't remember the meaning behind it, and that's good enough. Jack hopes those oddities are the extent of their old ways, hopes they'll learn and grow and love, hopes he lives long enough to see it. 

Everything reminds him of Rapture, the trees and bees of Arcadia, the shops and performance halls of Fort Frolic, the religious fools who preach on the street-corners remind him of the very name of the godforsaken place. 

"The rapture is upon us soon!" they cry, Jack can only hope they're never truly prophetic. 

But Jack's survived Rapture once before and he knows he'd survive again, regardless of if he wanted to. He's a parasite, not the kind Ryan preached of, but a real one, like a cockroach, undying and irksome. Brutality is in his blood, or programmed into his veins, he can't tell which is which on a good day. Rapture has never truly left him, the threat of great men with great chains still ever present, even so branded into his wrists, but as Jack looks above him, sees the sky stretch for miles, unbridled and never restrained, no matter how great the man, no matter how great the chain, he understands what it's like to live topside: free. A freedom Ryan could preach but never contain, a chance to live the life Rapture pretended to provide, for him, for the little ones, away from ADAM and manipulation, and in his case mind control. 

Sometimes Jack wishes he took the city, but he realizes with New York, he still can.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: my favorite sentence in this is: "Sometimes he regrets it, ever going down there; next time he's faced with a strange lighthouse in the middle of the ocean he'll burn the place to hellfire and turn his back on it." idk why. 
> 
> Hmu on tumblr @barefootcosplayer


End file.
